RonVitale.com

I'm Tired

On the Home Front

I’m exhausted today. My son woke up at 3:30 a.m. crying and he had a difficult time going back to sleep. He’s been afraid of the dark and it’s possible that he was having nightmares of a pumpkin blinking light that we had shown him earlier that evening. Last night I did more packing and I must admit that I feel overwhelmed. When you look around your house and think “Everything has to be packed. Everything,” it’s a bit difficult to swallow. All the books, items in the garage, the basement, out in the backyard, under the bed, pictures on the walls, everything. That’s a lot of “things” to pack.

The search for a home still goes on. I suspect that this will take some time. We’re seeing more houses this weekend. Maybe we’ll find the one for us.

As for writing: There’s this. That’s something, right? I have no been motivated nor have I had time to write. But I did feel like writing the piece yesterday about the Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal. I visited the official Website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and was a bit surprised at how negative they were toward the grand jury report. The official response appeared to be angry at how the spin on the release of the article was reported by the media, but I must say that I don’t agree with the Church’s mentality that the grand jury report is casting that the sexual abuse is a “Catholic clergy” problem rather than a societal problem. The response by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia also states that the “cover up” by Church officials is unfounded.

Who to believe?

The fact that hundreds of children were sexually abused over the last 40 years is a frightful fact, reported by the grand jury. Never once did I think that the grand jury report was trying to put a spin on the issue, stating that only Catholic clergy are responsible for sexual abuse. Instead of seeing the Catholic Church try and negate the charges, I would like to see people step forward and accept responsibility.

Cardinal Justin Rigali’s (Archbishop of Philadelphia) response is surprisingly condemning. I’m disheartened by it and can only hope that those children, who are now adults, can find the healing they need and that the children of today are not abused by Catholic priests.

Where Is God?

Recently the Philadelphia area press have reported on the grand jury report that the office of the Honorable Lynne Abraham (District Attorney of Philadelphia) released concerning the cover up of abusive Catholic priests. My friend and I were talking about this report over lunch today and, unfortunately, I’ve been so busy with work and with home issues that I didn’t pay attention to the news last week. But when my friend told me some of the stories that she had read in the report, I have to admit that I thought she was exaggerating. Here are some direct quotes from the report report:

(from page 9 of the 424 page report)

“These are the kinds of things that Archdiocese priests did to children:

--A girl, 11 years old, was raped by her priest and became pregnant. The Father took her in for an abortion.
--A 5th-grader was molested by her priest inside the confessional booth.
--A teenage girl was groped by her priest while she lay immobilized in traction in a hospital bed. The priest stopped only when the girl was able to ring for a nurse.
--A boy was repeatedly molested in his own school auditorium, where his priest/teacher bent the boy over and rubbed his genitals against the boy until the priest ejaculated.
--A priest, no longer satisfied with mere pederasty, regularly began forcing sex on two boys at once in his bed.
--A boy woke up intoxicated in a priest’s bed to find the Father sucking on his penis while three other priests watched and masturbated themselves.
--A priest offered money to boys in exchange for sadomasochism – directing them to place him in bondage, to “break” him, to make him their “slave,” and to defecate so that he could lick excrement from them.
--A 12-year-old, who was raped and sodomized by his priest, tried to commit suicide, and remains institutionalized in a mental hospital as an adult.
--A priest told a 12-year-old boy that his mother knew of and had agreed to the priest’s repeated rape of her son.
--A boy who told his father about the abuse his younger brother was suffering was beaten to the point of unconsciousness. “Priests don’t do that,” said the father as he punished his son for what he thought was a vicious lie against the clergy.”

My friend had not exaggerated. Far from it, she only told me some of the lesser details. And the strange and insane part of the whole report can be summed up in this quote: “This report contains the findings of the Grand Jury: how dozens of priests sexually abused hundreds of children; how Philadelphia Archdiocese officials – including Cardinal Bevilacqua and Cardinal Krol – excused and enabled the abuse; and how the law must be changed so that it doesn’t happen again.” Cardinal Krol (who is now deceased) and Cardinal Bevilacqua (who I believe was Archbishop at the time) are officially mentioned in the report as “excusing” the abuse. Because of the statue of limitations, the abuse dealt to hundreds of children cannot be tried in the court of law. I cannot believe this to be true. And yet it is.

Back in 1988 I met (then) Archbishop Bevilacqua at the Philadelphia Art Museum. I had been honored by the Archdiocese for being one of the top students in my High School class. My mom and I went to the event and had a great time. I still remember processing down the steps inside the museum in my cap and gown. Hundreds of students from all around the Philadelphia area were to receive the honor of being awarded a certificate for being the top in their class. Some students wore blue, or yellow, red, and black gowns—I still remember the vibrant colors and the excitement in the air. After the ceremony, I met Archbishop Bevilacqua and remember him asking me: “What do you want to grow up to be?” I thought for a moment and told him that I wanted to be an astronomer or a writer. He took in what I said and then asked, “Have you considered becoming a priest?” I did not tell him that I had considered that, but had decided that it wasn’t for me. I simply smiled at him and went my way. This same man was responsible for helping to hid sexual abuse being committed by priests in the Archdiocese. I just can’t believe that so many men who had been the religious leaders in the area could do such a thing. How is this possible? And why would they do this? Why would they protect dozens of priests who were sexual abusers, allowing hundreds of children to be abused? Why?

I have been raised Catholic, but have not practiced my faith in almost 15 years. I have my reasons. And it’s not that I do not believe in God. I just do not believe in a man made religion that thinks that only the Catholic religion is the one “true” faith. That only Jesus can be God and that all the other religions are wrong. In High School, we asked our religion teacher (who was a priest): “Will the Bushmen of Africa go to hell because they don’t believe that Jesus is God?” We had set a trap for our religion teacher. We want to hear what the official religious teaching would be: Would God damn a person because he/she had not been lucky enough to learn who Jesus was? Or would our teacher tell us that God would be merciful? He told us that those in Africa, who had never heard the Word of the Lord, would be doomed to go to hell. And that got me thinking. I was about 13 or 14 years old at the time. I started thinking really hard: If you were God, I mean God in that you created all things and do anything, why would you damn people to hell because they simply had not heard of you? I just couldn’t understand that. And as I matured and began questioning my faith, I started wondering why God would need you to worship Him anyway. Heck, he’s God! Would He be so shallow and vain that you needed to stroke His ego and remind Him of your love? It just didn’t make any sense. Women cannot be priests. Priests cannot marry. The list went on and on until I realized that I needed to think for myself instead of people trying to cram a religion down my throat.

And today I learn about these horrid truths that have come to light. Some of the leaders of the Catholic Church in the Philadelphia area knowingly allowed reports of abuse to be hidden from the light of day until the statue of limitations had been reached. Now don’t get me wrong: I haven’t read the entire 424 page report, but from what I have read, I’m saddened and disgusted. Will justice ever come to these priests and to the leaders who allowed this to happen? Time will tell. But in the meantime, hundreds of children have grown up sexually abused. Their lives have been shattered. And they know that the men who abused them were never punished. How can this be? How?

Moving

Stress level factor is at an all-time high.  Work deadlines, raising a 2 year-old, not much free time, and stress, stress, stress.  Not a good combination, is it?  I’ve been trying to do triple duty and, as with anything in life, there’s only so much one person can handle.  Heck, there’s only so much two people (my wife and I) can handle.  She has started her own business, works her butt off in raising our son, and is also doing a ton of work in helping us find a new home.

Yep, that’s what my veiled “I have household chores to do” actually is: I’ve been ripping apart the basement, going through the process of throwing stuff out and packing the rest.  And have a lot of stuff.  So between searching through house listing, discussing our plans, visiting the houses, there’s just not a lot of free time.  My wife and I discussed the issue and we both agreed that now is a good time to start looking.  Will it take us 1 month, 6 months, or more to purchase our new home, who knows.  But we’ve begun.  And if some of you have not purchased a home, I believe the activity is ranked up there with funerals as some of the most stressful and emotionally draining events in one’s life. 

I’m doing my share in trying to get the house ready (our house needs to be in tip-top shape so that potential buyers can see what a great house it is)—that included everything from cleaning mold off the outside of the house to replacing a faucet in the kitchen (my wife did that—I was rather impressed).  Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning is the order of the day: Removing clutter, throwing junk out, and packing away.  There’s a lot of work to do, plenty for everyone, and then there’s the finances.  Oh, the joy of figuring out what you can afford in this inflated real estate market.  It’s stressful. 

But at the end of the day, I have my eye on the prize: A home in which our son can grow up along with baby #2 (still on the books people, let us do one thing at a time).  In the realm of the real world, deciding between finishing a story and securing a new place for our family to live is a pretty straightforward contest.  Buying the house and getting our house ready for sale wins every battle.  Sure, I could stop watching films and having any fun and just start writing, but these days writing has felt like work.  And I’ve already shared with you my thoughts on that: Writing that is forced makes me unhappy and more frustrated.  I know that preparing to move and buying a new home won’t last forever, but it is a stressful activity.  Having a child complicates matters: Taking a 2 year-old on a journey of seeing 5 or 6 houses on a Sunday afternoon can be an adventure all on its own (but to give our son credit, he was pretty damn good considering we had him out on the road for over 2 hours seeing houses).

My wife has put in a ton of time doing work around the house and in doing research for buying a home.  Me, I feel like I’m slacking because I’m at work all day.  Since she works for herself, she’s able to put in time during the day and then makes up the work at night.  So she’s putting in a ton of time.  And who suffers in all of this?  Typically, the couple.  Half the time you’re ready to argue at your spouse because you’re cranky, tired, and frustrated.  Buying a house isn’t as simple as picking the one you want and then that’s it.  Many times, you find the house, put in a bid and your bid isn’t accepted or you find out that someone else beat you to the punch—they’re already putting in a bid.  There’s so much that has to happen before our house is sold and we buy a new home and then actually move.  It’s not possible to plan everything because there are so many unknowns.  You don’t know how much your house will actually go for, don’t know how long it’ll be on the marketplace, and don’t know how long it’ll take to find and then obtain the house you want.  Could take a heck of a long time or happen quickly (last time when we bought our current home, the owners needed someone in within 30 days.  Man, that was quick.  But since we were at an apartment we were able to keep both places.  We spent an extra month in the apartment and then used the time to fix up our new home.)

Now with a child it’s not going to be that easy.  And as I’ve said, there isn’t a way to know how everything will work out.  To help alleviate the frustration, I’ve begun packing and going through our stuff, throwing out what is junk or we haven’t used in a long, long time.  Just packing up our books in the basement took a ton of boxes.  And there you have it: The source of my frustration.  I remember when we last moved there was a lot of work to be done.  Lots and lots of packing and work on the new house: Refinishing the hardwood floors, painting, cleaning, and other fixes.  We’ve learned a lot about painting and creating a style which is uniquely our own, but now we’ll have to recreate the new house to be our new home.  Such tasks could include: Painting, carpet cleaning, washing everything down, but then also such jobs as getting the wi-fi network up, setting up the audio equipment, unpacking, networking the computers together, and a huge list of other tasks that will go on and on.  Even after we had been in our current house for two years, we then decided to redo our bedroom and then prepare the third bedroom for our son.  We spents many long hours hand painting the leaves of the jungle in his room.  Sure we could have just painted his room white and that was it, but everytime I go into our son’s room I smile, looking up at the stars in the sky (we painted his ceiling to look like the night sky), and the trees on the corners of the room.  His “Where the Wild Things Are” room is pretty damn cool if I might say so.  I love it and he seems to love it. 

When I factor in the amount of work it’s going to take to get all these tasks done, I’m not so depressed because of that, but rather because I want to start.  I like to be active and not passive.  And so I’ve begun with packing.  Each night I come home and do some work on packing and throwing stuff out.  Last night it was only about an hour and a half, but I did get a good amount done.  Tonight I might do less because I have paperwork to review.  But there you have it: I’m busy as a bee.  Although I’m not writing as much as I might like, honestly, I would rather get through this rough patch and then get settled into our future new home.  But with all of this work: Nothing is set in stone.  Until we sign the new mortage, we’re at our current place—which is fine.  It’s just seeing the potential of a new home.  And the implications: Plans for our second child.  Again, all of this is just in the planning stage, but you have to start somewhere.  Purchasing a new home and moving is the significant step.

Playing

I took some time to do some work around the house this weekend and then to relax. However, I did get to go apple picking with my wife and son on Saturday. The weather was perfect—lots of son, not too hot, and a slight breeze. What an excellent day to go apple picking. Seeing my son eat his first apple picked right off the tree, was lots of fun. He really enjoyed himself. A few times I picked him up, lifted him high in the air, and had him pick an apple from way up in the tree. He rather liked that. In the last several months, my son has picked: Blueberries, raspberries, tomatoes, corn, peaches, and apples. Not bad for a 2 year-old! I don’t think I picked my first fresh veggie until I was near 20.

And to end the day, the orchard had Elmo stop by and sing some songs for all the kids. If you’ve never been to an event when Elmo comes on stage, you’re missing out. A person dressed in an Elmo costume comes on stage and starts singing along to the music. From the way kids act, you would have thought that Elvis had come back from the dead. It’s rather endearing to see the kids get so worked up over Elmo. And after feeding the geese, doing the Hokey Pokey with Elmo, and picking apples, we came home and crashed. The rest of the afternoon I did work around the house and then my wife and I had an excellent dinner.

Last night I watched episodes 1 & 2 of Season one of the TV series Lost. My wife has been trying to get me to watch the show for a while now so since it came out on DVD we rented it on Netflix. What did I think? Well, I wasn’t blown away by it, but I did enjoy it a lot. I noticed how much the format of the show was so similar to the show “24.” What I am trying to do is to limit my watching of TV, but at the same time, I believe it’s important for me to see what type of writing is taking place on the newer TV shows. Again, I did enjoy myself and had a good time watching the show. Now I just have to catch up with the entire season one. But that shouldn’t be too hard to do—with being able to watch the shows on DVD, I’ll get through the season pretty quickly.

Anything new and exciting? I didn’t do any writing this weekend (outside of this blog) and I’m not really feeling guilty about that. I’m in the beginnings of a cold and I feel like crap. I push myself pretty hard last week with work and staying up late. And this weekend, I got a good amount of work done around the house. I’m continually amazed at how little time there is to actually get work done. Between food shopping, doing wash, cleaning the bathroom, putting my son’s clothes away, spending time with my family, well, there isn’t much time left to relax. And instead of working this weekend, I promised myself that I would enjoy the little remaining time I had and relax. Last night, as my wife was putting my son to bed, I was cooking some sliced potatoes on the grill and working on making a salad. We didn’t get a chance to eat until near 8:30 p.m. last night, having decided that our son would eat early and we’d have a “date” by the two of us just eating. But it’s amazing as to how tired you can be when getting up early. Yesterday I was up by 5:30 a.m. and started working on some house chores. By the time we came back from the orchard, I decided to tap a nap too. I was beat tired. Even with the nap, I still wasn’t able to knock out this cold. I think it’s just going to have to take its course.

Not much new going on in the world. Hurricane Rita slammed itself into the Texas-Louisiana border and dumped a lot of rain on those states. Thankfully, people were more prepared for the hurricane than they were for Hurricane Katrina. And yesterday was also the peace rally to bring our troops home. Cindy Sheehan had some rather tough words for the President. In the long run, will the peace mark that took place yesterday make a difference? It’s tough to say. From the reports I read, it appears that nearly 100,000 showed up for the march. That’s now half bad. But what will happen now? The President wasn’t even in the DC, he was in Colorado, to handle the Hurricane Rita response.

I saw little coverage on local TV, but then again, I didn’t see the nightly news so it’s possible that the march did receive more coverage. I’m hoping that more people will realize that there needs to be a time limit put on the war. At this point, I think we’re stuck in a no-win situation—if we pull out, then anarchy could take place in Iraq. What would have been nice is for U.N. peacekeeping troops to take the place of the U.S.A.’s military role in Iraq. But unfortunately, I don’t see that ever happening. Let’s hope that something wakes up the rest of the nation and causes people to complain about the war. How many soldiers need to die before people realize that enough is enough? I wonder.

Thoughts

I actually did do some writing the other day, but by the time I had worked on my story, I had already finished writing my blog for the day. I’ve not had a lot of free time. It’s 9:30 p.m. on Monday night as I write this and I’ve been up since 5:30 a.m. I’m exhausted. I had a long day at work, came home and had a lot of work to do around the house. Now it’s getting late and I need to get this done. Why?

I am in a frustrated and angry mood. Just tired, exhausted, and not at all pleased. Not the greatest of moods to work on a short story. I wrote down a bit yesterday and even jotted some ideas down. But that’s about as much as I could handle. I had no more time available to me.

I’ll leave it at that.

I did see an interesting movie the other night. My wife and I rented “The Piano Teacher” and I must admit that I haven’t been so affected by a movie in a long, long time. I keep thinking back to scenes in the film, wondering why certain events happened, but, as in life, there are no answers. None at all. You’re left wondering, doubtful, and disturbed. However, if you’re at all disturbed by dark films that portray the shadowy side of human sexuality, then I would advise that you skip this film. I remember seeing the posters when the film came out in 2001, but I never had a chance to go and see it. Instead I forgot about it until I recently heard the “top 5 foreign language film” list on the Cinecast podcast. I remembered that I had wanted to see the film and then added it to my queue.

I also started watching “The Fast Runner” that I thought might be useful as a research piece for my latest story. I’m about 30 minutes into the film and had to stop because I wasn’t feeling well last night (I’ve been fighting off a cold). The movie is close to nearly 3 hours long. I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to finish watching it. I have a bunch of work that I need to do and watching another 2 hours of the film might not be in the cards for me.

Lots of other stuff going on in my life, but I simply want to focus on my frustration. I must admit that I’m at the nadir of my creative cycle. I’m swamped with work and house work. The little time I do have available just isn’t enough for me to want to drop everything to do some writing. I know that sounds horrible, but I want to be truthful. In my writing life, I’ve had to choose other responsibilities over writing. But this time, I’m taking the time to still write in this blog. This is the life of a full-time worker who also likes to write. You’re continually bombarded by so many other issues that it’s not a clear cut sense of: “Hey, let me stop and do some writing.” When I’m so busy like this, I don’t want to stop and do writing. I just don’t feel into it and I want to rebel.

What I struggle with, is juggling and then coming back to work on a piece. Hopefully, I’ll be able to make time this Saturday. I’m not happy with all the different issues swirling around right now, but I can only see that I need to simply keep my chin up and keep working. It’s not fun, but I find that if I express my frustration than I can help deal with overcoming the issues. I’ve never been one for keeping quiet. Well, at least I started opening my mouth back when I was a teenager. I realized that keeping everything all bottled up inside wasn’t really working for me so I started to talk.

It’s funny because when I was younger I would just sit and watch, but be seething inside. I would watch and watch the world around me, and take everything in. I wouldn’t say much, but I’d use my imagination to get me past a rough point. I’d think of whom I was and what I wanted, and I would get through my rough time. I found my ways to help myself. It was all I had. A large part of my therapeutic healing process centered around music. I loved listening to music. I loved singing along to the music. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t sing (and still can’t carry a tune), but I would voice my frustration anyway.

When I was kneeling on my bathroom floor on Saturday, scrubbing it, I heard a Paul McCartney song in the background—“Take It Away” from his Tug of War album. And the memories flowed back to me. I recall working at a local pizza place, handing out menus to a neighborhood about 5 miles from my home. The owner, myself, and three other kids canvassed the entire area, putting menus for the pizza joint in every door. I had my Walkman on, listening to the music, and I would just work, thinking about the future. I wondered where I would be in the future, wondering if I would be happier there than I was back then. Little did I know that I would have certain freedoms by the dozen, but severely lacking in time. And I remember that when I was young, having all summer to do whatever I wanted. I would read, read, and do more reading. I’d stay up late, working on my dungeons & dragons characters. Now I’m lucky if I can make it up to 12:30 a.m. since I get up so early. It’s just such a different life that I lead now than when I was younger. I longed for a companion, for understanding, and to belong. Now I long for time, quiet, and peace. It’s funny how life turns out. And it’s not that I’m disgusted with my life, just a bit overwhelmed by my present circumstances. There’s a lot going on that I’d rather not talk about online. It’s not the proper forum for it. Needless to say, just understand that I’m working as efficiently as I can and as hard as I can.

Yes, I’d like to do more writing, but there are higher priorities right now. C’est la vie. That’s just how it is. Peace.